‘Bruna?’
‘Hello, Aidan. How are you feeling?’ Probably wanting to throw up, I thought as I looked closely at him. ‘This is Staff Sergeant Paula Servla who is going to sit with us.’
He stared at me. His gaze flickered over to my gold eagle pocket badge, the black tee showing at my neck, and then my face.
‘You’re a Praetorian! Jupiter save me.’
‘That much of a shock?’
‘I thought you were a scarab.’
‘I’m called “Bruna” sometimes, but my correct name is Captain Carina Mitela and I belong to the special forces section.’ I let that sink in.
‘Does Mossia know?’ he asked, processing this information.
‘No. She knows I’m something in law enforcement, but not which unit, nor my rank and name. I need you to keep that to yourself. Can you do that?’
He nodded, but continued to stare at me.
‘Now, we only had a few minutes to talk before. I really need you to expand on what you told me then.’
‘Bruna – no, sorry, Captain,’ he stumbled. ‘I’m very sorry, but I haven’t thanked anybody yet for rescuing me. I’ve been trying to get my head around it.’ He looked at me. ‘I must be feeling better. I’m starting to analyse myself now. Gods! I’ll be in therapy for years!’
‘Don’t worry, Aidan,’ I said, touching his arm. ‘Everybody feels a bit weird after this kind of experience. Call me Bruna if it’s easier or more natural to you.’ I smiled at him. ‘Tell me everything in as much detail as you can. Everything, however trivial you think it is.’
Paula made notes while I listened, watching Aidan’s face and prompting him.
‘…so I asked Tacita to give me information about your legate. Mossia had mentioned that Tacita worked in the military, possibly in the PGSF.’
Juno. Aburia’s security was crap letting that out. Why didn’t she pretend to be a scarab like the rest of us did?
‘Caeco said I must have somebody among my clients I could use.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘I thought Tacita was my best bet. She’d taken a liking to me.’
Not very glorious behaviour, but I could follow his logic.
‘But why did she do it?’ I asked. I’d see the report from Petronax later. His internal security team had started interrogating Aburia yesterday. But I wanted to hear it first from Aidan.
He looked directly at me. ‘She did it for me. I think she felt sorry for me. I used her to protect myself from Caeco.’ He dropped his head in his hands. He looked racked. ‘It was only afterwards I realised how deeply I loved her.’
In the meantime, he’d dumped Mossia. Bastard.
I stood up and walked over to the water cooler, almost wrenched the tap off, and filled a cup with water. I stood with my back to him until I’d finished. From the side, Paula shot me a warning look. I crossed back to him, stopping barely centimetres away, forcing him to crook his neck up. ‘So what did you pass on? About the legate?’
Aidan looked at me. My name badge was in his face. He stared for a few moments then shrank back. ‘You’re related to him, aren’t you?’ he whispered. He covered his face with his hands.
‘What did you pass on, Aidan?’ I repeated.
‘How do I know you won’t lock me up and melt down the key?’
‘You don’t. But you’ll find out if you don’t give me more.’
He was caught whatever he did. He wiped his hand across his face, looked at me, then at Paula. His gaze came to rest on the table.
‘Tacita told me about the reorganisation, the new staff appointments, his assessments of people, his tough attitude to corruption.’
All standard intelligence gathering.
‘Then I had to ask her for other stuff – his wife,’ Aidan glanced in my direction, ‘her family, her children, his children and imperial connections.’
Not so standard.
‘So how did Caeco react when you delivered?’
‘He wanted more – attitude to the throne, loyalty, any resentment or bitterness about his first family’s punishment.’ He looked at me, but I didn’t move. ‘But Tacita didn’t know. Then I didn’t see her again.’ His voice dwindled to a whisper. The deep hurt and bleakness in his expression kept me from being too hard on him.
‘Okay, Aidan. Let’s leave it there. I want you to think about the whole time from when you joined that poker game to now. Divide it into separate days and write everything down that happened each day.’
‘So am I a prisoner?’
‘Let’s just say it’s safer for you to be in here at the moment.’ I signalled to Paula to pack up.
‘And Tacita?’ Aidan said.
‘She’s not your concern any more.’
He jumped up, eyes blazing, and took a step toward me. ‘What have you done with her?’
‘She’s alive and well – that’s all I can say.’
He opened his mouth to say something.
I looked back at him with a steady gaze.
He dropped his eyes, and Paula and I left.
‘That was a fun interview!’ We walked into the observation room and saw Flavius looking sombre and Atria apprehensive. Both were silent. I frowned, not understanding; then I turned around and saw Conrad, shoulders leaning against the wall, not happy.
‘You three, go write your notes up.’ I glanced at my team and nodded towards the door. They were out in an instant.
‘What in Hades is going on?’ Conrad asked, almost to himself. ‘Those were some damned intrusive things they wanted. How did they expect Aburia to know?’
I was momentarily distracted by the obs screen blanking. I took a few moments to log off the session.
‘Would you mind if we left it until later?’ I said. ‘This is more than just putting pressure on a soft target. It’s becoming a personal and family matter for us.’
One eyebrow went up and a question in his eyes, but I was relieved when he gave a short nod.
X
Beyond the maze lay a secluded part of Domus Mitelarum’s grounds. A three-metre high wall enclosed a private garden full of lavender, sage and rosemary, edged with mulberry and fig trees between walkways festooned with trailing vines. Across one corner lay a triangular wooden summer house, with honeysuckle chasing all over it. The rich scents of the plants released by the warm evening drifted and swirled around inside the confines of the golden stone wall. A large myrtle tree stood at the centre with a teak bench circling it. Myrtle for Mitela. I stretched up my hand and crushed its leaves between my fingers. You could get high on the rich scent released.
There was only one gated entrance, so it was totally private. Nonna had handed me the heavy, spiral-headed key when I’d first arrived in Roma Nova like she was handing on an heirloom. After the break-up with Conrad years ago, it had been my haven. Now I shared it with him.
‘This afternoon,’ I said, not looking at Conrad, ‘after Aidan’s interview, I know I stepped across the line. I apologise.’
‘We’re still waiting for various reports so it wasn’t crucial. I appreciated that you didn’t pull the family card in front of others.’
I stared at him. Well, obviously not. I sometimes wondered if I was more aware of keeping a professional distance at work than he was. But now, despite being in our intimate retreat at home, he was still in work mode.
‘So what did you think of what Aidan gave you? What’s your general analysis?’
‘My instinctive reaction is that you, and by extension all of us, are being challenged in some way, personally, as a family.’
Conrad raised his brows. ‘Reaching a bit, aren’t you?’
I made a moue but said nothing.
‘Things like the reorganisation, new staff appointments and my attitude to corruption are pretty much open book,’ he said. ‘It’s the sort of standard information any intelligence agency would have on record. Fair game – we have it on others.’ He smiled. ‘I suppose that both our imperial connections are interesting,’ he admitted. ‘But what the
Hades is this “attitude to the throne, loyalty, any resentment or bitterness about his first family’s punishment” to do with anybody? I thought that was all behind me.’
I saw the shade of Caius Tellus flit across the garden and shivered. Nearly thirty years after his death, Conrad’s traitor stepfather was still reaching out to taint us. I remembered Conrad’s haggard face the day he’d revealed what had happened to him. We’d been at Castra Lucilla, our summer home in the country, lying on a rug drying in the sun after a vigorous swim. He wouldn’t detail the personal abuse Caius had imposed on him. He stayed silent for a few minutes at that part, his breath light and eyes unfocused.
After the city had been retaken by imperial forces and Caius’s brutal rebellion defeated, Quintus had discovered the nine-year-old Conrad cowering, filthy and terrified, in a locked cellar in Caius’s suburban villa. During the journey to the derelict farm in the east that the ruined and disgraced Tella family had been allowed to keep, Conrad remembered pulling the blanket over the back of his head and huddling on the seat of an old utility truck, refusing to let go of Quintus as they drove through the night. He remembered the headlights shining through the rear window panel from the escort vehicle and blinding him whenever he glanced back.
I’d held Conrad quietly in my arms that day by the lake while he wept at the memory of his ruined childhood.
‘I don’t think it’s to do with that,’ I said. ‘Uncle Quintus is surely more vulnerable than us if that were the case.’
Conrad looked thoughtful, his gaze fixed on the far wall. Without turning, he asked, ‘What do you think about consulting Aurelia? She has excellent instincts.’
My grandmother operated these days as a consultant to the Imperatrix Silvia. But they were even closer; Silvia’s father had been Aurelia’s youngest cousin. More importantly, Aurelia Mitela headed the most senior of the Twelve Families, so knew everybody, and everything about everybody.
‘I don’t think I want to involve her – I feel it would endanger her.’
‘Why on earth do you think that? She’s not as strong physically, granted, but inside she’s as tough as old boots.’
I took a few moments to watch the light playing on the stone wall through one of the fig trees. Strange how the pattern chopped and changed, yet the light stayed essentially the same. Too bad life wasn’t like that.
‘Do we need to take any special precautions here, at the house, do you think?’ he asked.
‘The building itself is pretty secure with the scanlocks. And they have regular security staff and CCTV. What more could we do? The only way in is with the access codes.’ I glanced up at him. ‘Maybe this isn’t the moment to mention it, but I had Flav and Livius try to break in last month.’
‘What?’
‘I bet them a crate of beer, but they couldn’t crack the scanlock codes.’ I wasn’t going to say that Fausta had programmed the codes for Junia. ‘They failed, but I gave them the beer anyway.’
He tugged my hair, but gently, and shook his head. But it made him smile.
‘The children are well-protected. Helena will ensure they don’t go anywhere at the moment without her, plus one of the house servants. But I’ll talk to Nonna anyway about increasing security.’
‘We should have preliminary results from the interrogations tomorrow and the intel reports, so should have a clearer idea then,’ Conrad said.
‘You know something?’ I took a deep breath. ‘I’ve had it with not seeing it. I’m going to try a deep state analysis.’
XI
I’d always been able to switch off – daydreaming, Uncle Brown had called it and snorted when I’d misplaced a whole afternoon once. I’d never connected it to how solutions to my girlish problems appeared soon afterwards.
One warm day, seven years ago at my training camp, I was slumped over on the grass, recovering after a strenuous trail run. I’d been trying to puzzle through a problem and thought a hard run would help. I closed my eyes to relax and woke only when a small bird chirruped near my ear. In a clear, almost overbright moment, I had my solution. More importantly, I knew how I’d done it. I’d been slow making the connection, but now I had it.
With practice, I could access this dream state at will to analyse any problem. But forcing it wasn’t always good. Sometimes my head stung like it had been scoured out with coarse-grade tungsten carbide sandpaper. And my hearing and vision became super-sensitive. But it was a great gift. And gave great results.
Next morning, as the meeting broke up and the first debrief started, Conrad came over, gave me an appraising look. ‘Any good?’
‘Oh, yes, and then some.’
‘My office, then, lunchtime.’
My debrief with Petronax in the internal security office was as wonderful as I’d anticipated. During her interview, Aburia had been composed and had said very little.
‘She just sat there and wouldn’t give a reason beyond that it was personal. Did you girlies fall out about a new frock or someone you fancied?’ Petronax smiled, nastily. I knew he was trying to bait me, but I ignored it. I couldn’t tell whether or not Aburia had accessed my lock box for information about my meetings with Aidan, but I wasn’t going to mention that to Petronax. Besides, that was pure speculation.
He was perfectly aware he had an unpopular job and that most people instinctively avoided him. Lucius said he was meticulous and disciplined in everything he did, but regretted that Petronax couldn’t resist the temptation to take his obnoxious attitude out for an airing whenever possible. If he were more professional, more people would forgive him for existing.
Looking disappointed I wasn’t going to provide him with any fun, he pulled his lips together as if attacked by lemon juice. ‘She strikes me as being completely distracted. We pushed her hard, but she wouldn’t budge. That’s the problem trying to deal with you lot – you’re all too well trained in resisting interrogation.’ He snorted. ‘Her initial profile was of a steady, hard-working and reasonably keen young officer.’ He looked at her file on his desk. ‘She’s never had any disciplinaries, even when training, unlike some people,’ he said snidely. He half-threw a stapled bunch of paper at me, ‘Here’s the transcript. Make what you will of it.’
‘What happens now?’
‘We’ll commission psych reports on her and she’ll have a judgement hearing in due course. If proven, she’ll probably get between five and eight years.’ He looked straight at me. ‘I don’t like you, Mitela. You’re said to be a popular officer, and sharp as all hell. I think you’re disruptive. I won’t have this kind of incident on my watch.’
I waited to see if he had any more golden nuggets to offer. Apparently not.
‘I’ve got nothing more to say to you – dismissed.’
Back at my desk, an urgent message was flashing on my screen ordering me to Colonel Somna’s office in attendance on the legate.
Juno.
Somna, the Head of the Interrogation Service. What in Hades did she want? As I rushed through the IS general office, I almost collided with Daniel.
Before I asked, he shook his head. ‘Not a clue.’
I rolled my eyes at him and trooped in after him to find Conrad already there along with Sepunia.
Somna’s office looked fairly standard, with bookshelves the dominant feature. She seemed to have more on philosophy and history than applied harassment. Around forty-five, Somna looked like a tax inspector, complete with glasses, thin lips and ordered hair. Although the rest of her face didn’t show any hostility, her pale grey eyes were cold. I knew how formidable in action she was from the receiving end. Maybe she could have got more out of Tacita. But Petronax protected his internal security jurisdiction like a vampire defending his source of blood. Sharing did not occur to him.
Somna was handing out sheets of hardcopy and gestured at us to take chairs from her meeting table.
‘I want to show you some interesting footage from the public feed, but first I’ll bring you up to date on the interviews. We haven�
�t had a great deal of luck with Caeco. Our language psych says he’s a native speaker, from the western provinces – he thinks perhaps Aquae Caesaris – but he’s spent a lot of time in the city. He’s a self-confident individual, convinced of his abilities. Although he looks like a standard muscleman, he has a very solid internal core. He may well turn out to be ideologically motivated.’
‘In what way ideological?’ Conrad asked.
‘We don’t know,’ Somna replied. She looked at us all. ‘I understand that’s frustrating for all of you. We’re trying some other things in the meantime, but it would be helpful to know, Legate, how quickly we need to crack him.’
‘It’s becoming more important. There are no individual DNA matches, which I find astounding. We must find out who Caeco and his people are, and why they held the therapist hostage. He’s a nobody, but they put considerable resources into their operation. At a guess, I don’t think they realised we would discover them so quickly.’
‘I see,’ said Somna. ‘You’ll be pleased to know we’ve done better with Sextus. He’s a local boy. Sepunia’s intelligence section has been invaluable in liaising with my team. Their staffer has been able to cross-check instantly and advance our interrogation considerably. I hope this new interdeployment will continue.’ She flicked a glance toward Conrad who nodded back. ‘Anyway, Sextus. He’s had a couple of warnings, nothing serious. Living with his father, who took him away from his family when the boy was four years old. Sextus is his real praenomen, but his mother’s family is a branch of the Corneliae.’
One of the Twelve! I wonder what snooty Livia Cornelia would think of their wandering boy?
‘The father is a middle-ranker, with his own small business, and has supported them both since the split with the family. DNA testing done years ago proved the father-son relationship. The certificate has been lodged as a public record. The boy uses the father’s surname only.’ Conrad and Sepunia looked shocked. As foreign-born, Daniel and I were less anal about these things.
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